Interview: Backed by Strong Video Communications Market, Avistar Calls for 75 Percent Growth in '09

The eyes of the world are expected to turn toward Washington, D.C. tomorrow for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the United States 44^th president.

 

With the nation’s Federal Communications Commission chairman lined up, many IT and telecom professionals are looking to Obama for an answer to a question that’s plagued the nation’s automotive industry for years: What can you do to boost our competitiveness.

 

For Stephen Epstein, chief marketing officer for San Mateo, California-based video communications company Avistar, Obama largely answered that question already.

 

“America needs to invest in industries that power the future, such as renewable energy, infrastructure and small businesses that can think out of the box and innovate the way we all work and live,” Epstein told TMCnet in an interview, printed in full below. “Providing access to research, infrastructure and generally supporting small businesses would greatly benefit America’s ability to innovate and become more competitive.”

 

Epstein works for a company that seems to know what it’s doing – Avistar (News - Alert) is predicting that its revenues will grow more than 75 percent this year, thanks in large part to its cost-saving video communications technologies.

 

Naturally, Avistar isn’t alone in its success in the market space. As TMC (News - Alert) President Rich Tehrani reported, the head of a Hillside, New Jersey’s Glowpoint, Inc., an IP-based managed video communications services provider, also is playing in spaces that are resisting the recession: videoconferencing, telepresence and contact centers.

 

As Epstein said in our interview below, proven visual communication solutions that are cost-effective and simple to maintain form a compelling business proposition in this economy.

 

Our exchange follows.

 

 

Stephen Epstein (pictured left): In 2008 Avistar updated its go-to-market strategy and made a concerted effort to extract industry-leading components from its visual communications platform. Over the past decade, the Avistar C3 (News - Alert) platform has been enhanced to provide industry-leading technology, such as “Avistar C3 Command” – which is Dynamic Bandwidth Management that allows applications such as the Avistar C3 Desktop to make intelligent decisions as to the user’s quality of experience under ever changing networking and resource conditions.

 

Others include “Avistar C3 Conference,” a software-only multi-party conferencing solution, and “Avistar C3 Desktop,” a visual communications application that provides the functionality outlined above, plus one of the industry’s best desktop video experiences from any location – office, home, on the road.

 

These technologies (or “components,” as we call them) are now driving some of the industry’s largest unified communications platforms in addition to being resold to an ever growing distributor and reseller network.

 

In these economic conditions, visual communication solutions that are proven to work, that are cost-effective, and that are simple to maintain, create a very compelling business proposition both to businesses in need of these solutions and vendors who sell such solutions.

 

 

SE: First, IBM. Second, LifeSize (News - Alert). Third, 20-plus global AV resellers and distributors – CityIS is an example.

 

 

SE: A recent report produced by Wainhouse provides a vivid look into this industry’s growth. As the economy continues to suffer and businesses look for ways to cut costs while better serving their clients, desktop video conferencing, or “Personal Video Conferencing,” as some call it, is predicted to grow from 8 percent of a global $1.5 billion marketing in 2008, to 23 percent of a global $1.7 billion market in 2012. The Avistar business growth is surely aligning to the industry growth suggested in recent analyst reports

 

 

SE: Although no business is recession proof, the desktop visual communication industry is surely expanding based on the cost saving, productivity gains and client reach that these technology provide.

 

 

SE: Many years ago, Avistar saw a day where desktop visual communication solutions would be software-only. With the ever increasing price performance of desktop, laptop and server systems, and the ubiquity of broadband bandwidth on a global scale, we decided to move off our legacy hardware architecture and adopt a full software only platform and suite of components. Clearly the industry is saddened by the challenges Nortel is facing, but in a world where hardware and networks are becoming commodities, business value and intellectual property must be delivered through flexible, scalable and standard based software.

 

 

SE: President-elect Obama actually answered this question last week. America needs to invest in industries that power the future, such as renewable energy, infrastructure and small businesses that can think out of the box and innovate the way we all work and live. Providing access to research, infrastructure and generally supporting small businesses would greatly benefit America’s ability to innovate and become more competitive.

 

 

SE: Looking forward, as the backbone of the visual communications experience.